Reflections of Rita...

I can't believe it's been 3 years since Hurricane Rita hit Texas - it feels like I was preparing for it just a month ago! Here is my one and only hurricane story...

I was working for a company called Town Center Improvement District in The Woodlands, Texas when Rita was approaching. She was a unpredictable hurricane in that she kept changing her direction so we didn't know where she was going to make landfall. But mostly she was heading straight for Houston as a Cat 5 hurricane. I remember friends at work telling me what to do and how to prepare. I went with my friend Marcy on our lunch hour to get food, water and other items at the store. When we walked in I was amazed. The shelves were empty! I'm not kidding - people were loading up on everything! We got some of our items that we needed and went back to work. Our office - being a Government Agency didn't close nor would they let people leave unless you wanted to take vacation time to do it. I had only been there for 2 months so I didn't have any vacation time to speak of so I had to stay. Nice eh?

Anyway, Rita was suppose to hit on Friday night or Saturday morning, so I went into work on Thursday and we spent the day moving all the PCs, phones, important papers etc... to an interior office with no windows. Everything got locked up and covered with plastic. After I left that day I stopped and got gas not knowing that I was probably one of the last cars to get through the gas pump. Mike and I had decided to evacuate and his dad even had airline tickets for us at the airport if we could get there. Because of the roads we were unable to get to the airport so we decided to just head West to San Antonio to spend the weekend with his Grandma and Aunt and Uncle. But once we were able to get our stuff together the roads were jammed and no one was moving. Even the back roads we were going to take were backed up and the gas stations were empty. What normally took people 45 minutes to get from one place to another was taking 8 to 10 hours! People and pets were dying on the road from breathing in the gas fumes of all the cars. It was horrible!

So we decided to hunker down. Mike and I cleaned up the yard - removing any "projectiles" like garbage cans, bikes, wood and even loose bricks! Yes I said bricks. They warned us that in high winds they can easily get picked up and thrown! I cleaned out Mike's closet of all his clothes since his closet was centered more in the middle of the house. I added food, lots of water, flashlights, a weather radio, even stuff for the kids to keep them calm if we had to hide out in there.

About an hour before Rita was to hit Houston she shifted her path and moved East. This was huge for us. We got hit with the rain bands and high winds for about 4 to 6 hours. When the winds were at their worse I woke up and looked outside and saw our 22 pine trees in our back yard were making right angles and limbs and other debris were hitting our house and windows. I was most nervous about the trees falling since they were already bending over the house.

We made it through the night with our house keeping us all safe, but we lost our power. Our power was out for 3 days! In Houston when it's 90 degrees outside and there is 98% humidity you can't be in your house - it's basically a brick oven! Mikayla couldn't be in it at all b/c of some breathing problems she was having so we stayed with Marcy and her family. They had a beautiful house with a nice pool that we got to enjoy until our power was turned back on. Thanks again Marcy for taking us in!

You can go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita to find out some details of Rita if you feel so inclined to do so.

Anyway, as Hurricane Ike approaches Houston I am taken back to my experience and hope and pray everyone will be safe and Ike will just go away!!